Thought You'd Never Ask

Just mouthing off -- because I can.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Welcome to a new hero, and dumping a senator

Today I am admiring a well-spoken, passionate Brit who is saying all the things to his prime minister I would love to hear somebody prominent in Washington say to Barack Obama. Well done, sir. Keep up the good work and the good fight. You are inspiring more people than you know.

In other news, I have now officially dumped my support of my Republican Senator, and have sent him an email telling him so. First he supported that Bush-Kennedy "comprehensive immigration reform" ("Shamnesty") bill last year that would've granted amnesty to illegal aliens already in the U.S. without even first securing the borders. Later, after attempting to be seen toiling up the "bipartisan" high road, he rethought his stance on that (thanks to many "loud people" telling him their displeasure), and I was willing to give him another chance.

Then he voted in support of the abominable, misbegotten Consumer Product Improvement Safety Act. If you are not aware of how this horrible law is now hurting charities, thrift stores, libraries, and small businesses, and putting people at risk and/or out of business in perilous economic times like these, you should browse the detailed posts at Overlawyered.

Not only does my Republican Senator love to be seen as bipartisan more than he loves to stand on conservative principals; it seems my Republican Senator is now enacting more harm than good for the American people. It's time for me to start actively inquiring about and supporting alternatives as he comes up for re-election in 2010.

Check out this site to find a Tax Day Tea Party near you (via Bookworm). This is just the beginning. And this movement to protest the current accelerated erosion of our freedoms needs every available mind, heart, and body in the fight now.

SIDEBAR: When Obama loyalty oath seekers come calling on you (via Maggie's Farm) I suggest engaging in extended civil and civic dialogue. You can certainly waste their time, and maybe even give them something to ponder. Like: "Question Authority" maybe? Surely they can't be as brainwashed and indoctrinated as the Moonies once were, can they? Who knows, this might be your big chance to break the Obamaton spell and set a mind free.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Politicians and teachers unions vs. good education for the kids

Betsy, a teacher at a charter high school, is agitating to raise the cap on charter schools in her state of North Carolina. Politicans and teachers' unions keep the cap at 100, while students and parents are clamoring and begging for the freedom to start more schools. Meanwhile, charter schools in North Carolina do a better job of educating the kids at less cost. What's not to like? What's the hold-up? How can a thug racket like this be allowed to continue? What will it take to break up the cartel of teachers unions and politicians standing on the necks of the taxpayers and the kids?

Neal Boortz on the AIG bailouts

. . . a lone voice speaking up for the rule of law and for the free market in a sea of bipartisan (and somewhat opportunistic) outrage:

A lot of what we're seeing here is the anti-capitalist, pro-government left seeing an opportunity to demonize the private sector. The same politicians who are so adept at getting the public whipped into a frenzy over these bonuses seem somehow unable to gin up any degree of outrage over taxpayer money being spent on lobster sex and tattoo removal. At least there's a chance AIG is going to pay the money back. Let's see if some gang-banger gone straight offers up the money spent to remove his tats.

I, for one, am a lot more curious as to what Barney Frank's lover was up to at Fannie Mae while he was busy protecting that institution from President George Bush's attempts at reform, than I am in sending the New York Attorney general on a witch hunt for executives who received bonus payments pursuant to a contract.

Read the whole thing. Sure, outrage always feels good and fuels good motives some of the time. But I am always concerned about the rule of law in our country remaining paramount and undamaged. It seems to me that Congress passing laws to tax individuals who received bonuses voted on by the same Congress that didn't even read its own bill--and passing laws to retroactively dissolve or change legally-binding contracts--is almost never a good thing.

Seems to me too many are taking yet another potshot at "the rich" and fomenting group-think class warfare without even knowing the circumstances of the "bonuses" and/or the individuals involved. Hari kari indeed! Senator Grassley's remarks are what I mean by opportunistic rage. He is acting more like a politician than a statesman.

The US government owns 80% of AIG, and the chief executive of the US whined like a recently promoted secretary still asked to make coffee. He could do anything he wanted. But he did what all bad executives do: He tried to leave his castle with a pitchfork and join the mob and yell at the spot he used to be standing in. It doesn't work that way.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Learning is a lifetime project

I am fortunate to come from a family of autodidacts and book lovers, and married into a family of the same. Right now, just for fun, my Dreamboat is taking his second semester of undergraduate Physics at MIT--by watching the online course lectures of the legendary Walter H. G. Lewin and following along in the textbooks. Why? Just because it fascinates him and he's always wanted to know more about electricity, magnetism, optics, and so forth. Plus, he's learning new stuff they didn't even know back in the 1970s when we were in college. Like red sprites and blue jets. There is so much new cool stuff to know in science.

The list and the wealth of the free, available resources just keeps growing and growing. There is no excuse for any healthy adult to remain uninformed in this country, unless they choose not to put the time into it. This is another incalculable benefit of our digital age, there for anyone who wants to take advantage of it.

The moral argument against socialized health care

Not many people in politics discuss the situation on a moral plane--nor do they often choose to discuss ideas so clearly as in this article by Leonard Peikoff--but I think it's high time more people start realizing the realities implicit in the fact that under our Constitution "health care is not a right" and good thing, too. Nationalized/socialized/"universal" government-provided health care is "vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice"--

Today, however, we are seeing the rise of principled immorality in this country. We are seeing a total abandonment by the intellectuals and the politicians of the moral principles on which the U.S. was founded. We are seeing the complete destruction of the concept of rights. The original American idea has been virtually wiped out, ignored as if it had never existed. The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents—rights which require no earning, no effort, no action at all on the part of the recipient.

Read the whole article.

When doctors become slaves and government confiscates wealth to redistribute it to those who have not earned it, against the will of the people who have earned it, no good will long result. Masses of people and the entire country will ultimately be much worse off. No matter how the politicians who want to enact it try to spin it.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

My proposal for reinvigorating the economy

Even the Associated Press has finally wised up to and admitted the downside of the Obama administration's fumbles in making our economy worse. You know it's bad (and common knowledge) when the mainstream media finally has to put it into print:

...Many health care stocks are down because of fears of new government restrictions and mandates as part a health care overhaul. Private student loan providers were pounded because of the increased government lending role proposed by Obama. Industries that use oil and other carbon-based fuels are being shunned, apparently in part because of Obama's proposal for fees on greenhouse-gas polluters.

Makers of heavy road-building and other construction equipment have taken a hit, partly because of expectations of fewer public works jobs here and globally than first anticipated.

"We've got a lot of scared investors and business people. I think the uncertainty is a real killer here," said Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy for the libertarian Cato Institute.

(My bold.) Wow, the AP is finally writing about the unintended consequences of the Obama administration's anti-enterprise, business-killing, people-squeezing policies. I think only the Obama administration and the people who blindly and ignorantly voted for him as a saviour/historical messiah/non-Bush antidote are surprised about any of this. The market, on the other hand, comprised of people who actually understand economics, could see what was coming since before election day, and has reacted accordingly. The market documents expectations, and with Obama in charge, proving to be as radically progressive as he'd promised, expectations aren't good. The rest of us Americans who didn't vote for this are dismayed, and still trying to minimize our losses as best we can, looking after our own interests and those of our loved ones, in the face of promised and impending massive, wasteful, and unutterably foolish big-government intervention, unsought and unwanted, in our lives.

The AP article ends up with this:

Allan Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics, a Boston-area consulting firm, said the complexity and enormity of the crisis make it hard to solve.

"There's no way to get it all right, regardless of which president is making policy," Sinai said. "The problem is the sickness got too far. The actions taken, medicine applied, were mainly the wrong actions. So it's just worse, and it gets harder to deal with. At this stage, there is no easy answer, no easy way out. It's a question of how we fumble through."

Yeah, there's no way to get it all right. But Obama and the Democrats have repeatedly made huge business-killing missteps (or, as some say, purposely business-killing steps)--and even purposeful charity-killing missteps or steps--as part of their avowed agenda. Whether ignorantly or purposely, or both, they have made a recession infinitely worse.

I am not just here to snipe. I have proposals that could get the market going again, if anything could. If President Obama and Congress were to telegraph the enactment of any of these proposals, the market would be shooting skyward within days, if not immediately:

1. Rescind the stimulus/porkulus bill. Pass barebones legislation without any earmarks, big enough just to fund the government and keep the lights on, under the same budget as in 2008. Freeze all departmental budgets at 2008 levels. Announce that all Federal budgets will be cut five percent each year, starting in 2010, until the budget is balanced and the deficit is paid off. Announce that the President will be going through all legislation, line by line, to veto any earmarks by both parties (and somehow get us to believe that he means it). Freezing government spending is no different than what many state, county, and local governments, school districts, and individuals and families are having to do in the current recession. We the people are cutting spending and tightening our belts and so should Uncle Sam. If Obama really wanted to make a splash, he could recommend that he and every Congress person and Congressional staff member now cap their salaries at a 10-20 percent reduction, and cut staff employees by five percent. And why doesn't Congress vow to prohibit their members from flights on private and military jets? After all, this is a time of sacrifice for everyone, and politicians should take the lead.

2. Announce that there will be no more government bailouts of failing private companies that are not FDIC-guaranteed banks. That means let GM go through bankruptcy, get restructured, and start producing again, like Delta and Northwest and other airlines have done--and like large and small businesses do all the time in a dynamic free market. The case of bailing out AIG as "too big to fail" and a key player threatening a systemic collapse including millions in teachers' pension funds may be debatable--but failing bloated, unproductive companies like the Big Three automakers should no longer feel entitled or welcome to hie to Washington with their hands out. Make this policy firm and known, and Americans will no longer feel their hard-earned money is being squandered by Washington on favored-insider losers. All, big and small, should look to the market and their own decisions, not Washington, for success or failure.

4. Abolish the complicated and punitive current income tax system and the IRS (this will save a lot of dough) and enact the much simpler Fair Tax (national sales tax) to fund the Federal government. The same amount of revenue to Washington is projected under the Fair Tax (i.e. it is a proposal that is revenue-neutral)--except that business and spending will be so stimulated, and investment in the U.S. as a tax haven from around the world will be so encouraged, that total tax revenues will actually increase (remember the Laffer Curve?), while individuals will pay the same or smaller taxes as they do now. Meanwhile, all citizens will receive a monthly check from the government reimbursing them for the cost of the tax on the basic necessities of life. So that the poor will in effect remain untouched by having to pay any Federal taxes. And the middle-class and wealthier citizens will have a much simpler, much more stable and fair tax obligation they can count on and plan on. (Read the details before you knock it.)

5. Repeal all minimum wage laws. Let individuals voluntarily contract between themselves for what needs to be done. The immediate and beneficial result of this action would be immediately increased employment, particularly within the poorest sectors. The self-protectionistic unions would scream, but young and unskilled workers getting a chance to earn money and learn skills and prove themselves on the job would benefit from businesses now willing to take a lowered risk on hiring them.

6. Repeal all Federal restrictions on energy development and exploration. Let states and localities, in conjunction with business, be the decisionmakers in allowing offshore or in-state drilling for oil or development of nuclear or alternate energy sources and facilities. Let the market determine the viability of projects and innovations, not the wasteful, partisan, and stupid "central planners" of the government bureaucracy.

I've got lots more ideas, radical ideas for hope and change, but these few first ones would get things humming within a week, once people really believed they were happening. I'm just a housewife, but even I could jumpstart the economy better than Obama and the Democrats could or would ever want to do. Because jumpstarting, growing, or protecting the health and success of the U.S. economy is clearly not their main priority. They don't really trust the American people with real freedom, the freedom to grow and fail, the freedom to be themselves and live their own lives and find their own success, apart from politicians.

The main priority of the Obamas and the Democrats lies in forcing a nation's people to live under their thumb, under their power and control, and under the whip of their failed and phantasmal ideologies--because they think they know better than we do what's best for ourselves and our families.

And so the market continues to tank, and distress stalks more Americans. How long before people wise up and stop just assuming that liberals are the "compassionate" ones, when it is precisely their avowed policies that are doing all of this damage?

P.S. Speaking of Atlas Shrugged, it is now ranked no. 37 in books on Amazon.com, and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights says “Sales of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008. This continues a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high in 2008 of about 200,000 copies sold.” All 37 copies in my local public library system are checked out and have indeterminable waiting lists. As are five sets of the book on tape. Only the 8-cassette abridged sound version is available. I just bought myself a new copy of the book to re-read.

Conservatives have historically been busy raising their families, working on careers, participating in religious activities and devoting the little free time they have to charitable works. We are not community organizers, agitators or activists. While we have been toiling with everyday life, expecting our elected officials to be doing the work we elected them to do, our liberal “friends” have been busy co-opting virtually every aspect of our lives—not just the obvious ones, like education and environment, but even going so far as to infiltrate and influence the policies of our churches and synagogues.

Anyone who pays attention to the news can see what is happening: our liberties, our savings, our values, our way of life are all being eroded at warp speed by the liberal juggernaut.

We can no longer sit back and hope the work is being done by others. ...

If we do not get involved, we are complicit in all the Obama Machine engenders.

Indeed, for a President who wants to "renew" America's relationship with the rest of the world, Obama is strikingly reluctant to actually, you know, speak to the rest of the world. When he embarked on his tour of europe last summer he failed to take a single foreign journalist with him; nor did he grant any interviews while he was in Britain, not even to the BBC. That pattern has largely continued now thta he's in office.

UPDATE: Not tacky--stupid. More background on Obama and his administration purposely dissing the British. ("Don't Blame Us, We're Incompetent!"). Unbelievable. These people do not speak for or represent me.

When you do not receive my check April 15, just know that it is an honest mistake. Please treat me the same way you treated Congressmen Charles Rangle, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and ex-Congressman Tom Dashelle and, of course, your boss Timothy Geithner. No penalties and no interest.

P.S. I will make at least a partial payment as soon as I get my stimulus check.

Hemorrhaging wealth

I once thought, a few months back, that if President Obama didn't screw up too badly, this recession that we are in could start to lift in the latter part of 2009, about as quickly as most recessions usually do. Before Obama started hawking his crisis, the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were still sound (albeit the banking sector was in an unsustainable position). All we needed were a few savvy, practical, enterprise-friendly policies put in place--you know, policies that ensured realistic liquidity in the credit markets, and encouraged (not taxed) the freedom of individuals, families, and all small businesses and large ones to grow wealthy and succeed. Policies that would provide a stable, low-tax, low-government-spending economic atmosphere in which Americans could find trust and be able to plan ahead to ride out the storm. Something like the Bush tax cuts, only permanent, as a pledge that people can start to count on in making investments and decisions about their own futures. Something to give the majority of Americans who still have jobs the confidence to continue to participate in the economy, not run for the bunkers.

But Obama campaigned on helping the victims in the minority by "spreading the wealth" around, not governing the country as a whole, and that's what he's still campaigning on. He is targeting and dividing Americans based on his own strange ideology of class, redistribution, and pet projects.

We have all seen our retirement funds significantly diminished, and now have less hope than ever that they (or our equity stakes in our housing) will ever rebound before we are old, under the kind of policies coming out of Washington in a Democrat-controlled environment. We expect the non-business-friendly, non-reality-based legislation already proposed--of bailouts and subsidies to fiscal losers paid for by already-strapped producers--(with more of the same yet to come) to depress our economy even more. We expect logical consequences to follow those unreal "budgets"--stagflation, hyperinflation, more unemployment, higher deficits, "unexpected" costs, unforeseen consequences. Generations of indebtedness; investment flight; demoralization; diminished and wasted resources. Bureaucratic inertia and corruption. Scarcities. Rationing. Everything that inevitably results from a centrally planned economy by "the elites." And ultimately, national bankruptcy, too? And nobody is even talking about what happens on top of all that, in the event of a natural or wartime catastrophe, either overseas or on our home soil. Where will the money come from, and who is supposed to pay it?

Seriously--is this what the Democrats controlling our futures really want for our country? Or are they just that inept--and unwilling to learn?

The only half-cheering note (not really) is that it is so much worse elsewhere. God save us from the worst on its way. We still have a lot going for us as Americans, including our flexibility, our freedoms, our rule of law, and our ability to innovate. Not to mention our rights to vote for real change in the next election cycles. But it's only been the first few weeks of the Obama Presidency. People are starting to think he and the Democrats, either willfully or ignorantly, really may purposely squander everything we've got.

How far have we come?--

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price."

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Krauthammer gets it

Obama sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity. He has said so openly. And now we know what opportunity he wants to seize. Just as the Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt's transformation of America from laissez-faireism to the beginnings of the welfare state, the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy.

As he says, the question is now whether the country wants this and whether it will let President Obama take them there.

About Me

50-something American baby-boomer, raised not to make waves over politics or religion, crawls out of the closet as a conservative/libertarian curmudgeon...ready to rant and exercise my rights as protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution--because I can, baby.
Is this a great country or what!?